Jin Chan's Pond of Riches

An auspicious full moon night awaits on the slot from Thunderkick. Jin Chan’s Pond of Riches brings the mythical lucky frog to a set of Asian-themed slot reels with wild multipliers of up to x120 and a free spins round with sticky respins, scatter collection and guaranteed wilds that can lead to wins of up to 10,000 times your bet.

Slot Details

Jin Chan’s Pond of Riches is a 5×3 video slot with 15 fixed pay lines. Wins are awarded for three to five matching symbols or in combination with a wild on a line from left to right only. You can call on the luck frog on desktop or mobile from 0.10 o 100 credits per spin. The game has high volatility (square root of variance is 130.3) and an unusually low RTP for Thunderkick games, coming in at just 94.27%.

Jin Chan is known as a Feng Shui charm for good luck and prosperity. It is said to appear on full moon nights in front of places that will soon be blessed with good news for wealth (source: Wikipedia). Loading the game will lead you to a serene pond with water lilies and a pagoda-style temple that can be reached via two pedestrian bridges. The lucky frog and his cohorts, who are dominating in the paytable, flank the heavily ornamented and supposedly auspicious reels. It can’t get much more Asian style.

The pay symbols start with the card royals 9, 10, K and A, held in an Asian style and awarding 5x to 6x your stake for a single five of a kind. They are followed by turtles, koi fish, herons and Jin Chan at the high end. Hit five on a line to win 15x to 50x your bet. A nature scene with a pond on a full moon night is the wild symbol, substituting for all regular pay symbols and also yielding 50x your stake for five across the reels. An icon with Jin Chan holding a golden Chinese lucky coin acts as the scatter.

Jin Chan’s Pond of Riches Slot Features

Thunderkick’s surprise move to significantly lower their default RTP value is bound to anger their loyal fan base and might backfire in the end. Although, maybe not that surprising as they did start to offer their latest creations with customizable settings, allowing casino operators to choose between two RTP settings, the usual 96.xx% or a lower one at 94.xx%. So far, not many have taken the lower setting, which makes this move even more suspicious. We will soon find out how the player community will react once they release Jin Chan’s Pond of Riches.

Well, let’s turn our attention to this slot as the lucky frog should have some positive surprises waiting, after all, he is a symbol of good luck and prosperous times. Core to the gameplay and scoring big wins are the Multiplier Wilds, which Thunderkick used for the first time on Midas Golden Touch, albeit the mechanic has been slightly altered on this creation. Each wild carries a multiplier equal to the reel it lands one, e.g. x1 for reel one, x2 for reel two and so on. More than one in a winning combo will be multiplied by each other with a potential to of up to a maximum multiplier of x120. A full line of wilds or with a Jin Chan symbol on reel one would thus pay a huge 6,000 times your bet.

Hitting three, four or five scatters anywhere on the reels will trigger 8, 12 and 16 Free Spins respectively, which cannot be retriggered as such but more spins can be won during the round. A collection meter with three sections will appear at the bottom of the reels. Each scatter landing on a free spin will be added to the meter and +1 free spin awarded. Once nine scatters have been collected, only +1 free spin will be granted. 

• Collecting 3 scatters: One non-sticky wild symbol is placed on a random position at the start of every free spin.
• Collecting 6 scatters: Two non-sticky wild symbols are placed on random positions at the start of every free spin.
• Collecting 9 scatters: Three non-sticky wild symbols are placed on random positions at the start of every free spin.

And there is more. Any win on a free spin will trigger the Sticky Respin feature.  All winning symbols will be locked in place with a golden background for a respin to hit more matching symbols that are improving the combo. The respin is repeated until no new matching symbols land or the screen is filled with sticky symbols. The wins are then evaluated and paid before the next spin starts. Getting to level three won’t be an easy feat as that will be the best moment to hit mega wins, which in this case, are capped at 10,000 times your bet.

Final Verdict

I predicted two years ago that RTP values will be reduced in the long term after the first slots with lower settings were introduced at online casinos. At the time, I said that they will eventually settle around a 94% value, which is roughly 2% lower than the standard values we had for some two decades. Sounds like a small number but it has a significant impact on the casino revenue and an even heavier one on our average playtime as balances will vanish much quicker. Well, Thunderkick seems to have settled on the lower value after offering some of their 2020 slots with dual RTP settings, which is rather regrettable.

As for Jin Chan’s Pond of Riches, it is an entertaining yet rather volatile game that has it’s good parts, especially if you can get to the final level in the free spins. Overall, well-designed as most creations coming from Thunderkick and a win potential to match.

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